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			<h1>Apple sauce for dinner</h1>
			<p>Day 01007: <time>Friday, 2017 December 08</time></p>
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<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/12/08.jpg" alt="Extracted teeth" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		I haven&apos;t been overly worried about my dental appointment.
		Until today.
		The impact of the procedure finally hit me.
		I wasn&apos;t going to be able to chew with either side of my mouth.
		The extraction itself would go fine, but as I won&apos;t have access to my kitchen around dinner time and would need something portable that doesn&apos;t require chewing or cooking.
		In other words, for the next several days, I&apos;d be doomed to have apple sauce for dinner every night, and it was going to be terrible.
	</p>
	<p>
		The dental assistant had a thick accent.
		Combined with my poor hearing, I often found it difficult to make out what they were saying.
		I think I caught all the important stuff though.
		They talked about getting a &quot;partial&quot; to aid in chewing and to help prevent bone loss, and I didn&apos;t understand what that meant.
		At this point, I&apos;m thinking about implants, so I&apos;m trying to figure out what a partial implant even is.
		Clearly, we couldn&apos;t be on the same page.
		&quot;A partial <strong>*what*</strong>?&quot;, I asked.
		They couldn&apos;t tell me, but they brought out samples.
		They&apos;re talking about partial <strong>*dentures*</strong>.
		What kind of dental assistant doesn&apos;t know the word &quot;denture&quot;?
		That said, based on their thick accent, word choice, and skipped words, I&apos;m going to guess that English isn&apos;t their native language.
		They&apos;re probably highly educated and know what they&apos;re doing like any other dental assistant, there&apos;s just a partial language barrier between us.
		So anyway, a partial denture I guess is supposed to help prevent the natural bone loss that occurs when teeth are no longer present, which makes adding implants late, if desired, easier.
		Insurance doesn&apos;t cover implants or dentures though, so this is all out of pocket.
		I&apos;m not sure I can afford implants right away, but it sounds like I don&apos;t have a choice on the denture.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve had my teeth drilled in the past.
		I inherited poor tooth strength from my mother.
		I refuse to pass that on myself, which is one of the multitude of reasons I&apos;m never going to breed.
		If anyone is going to be creating the next generation, it should be those that can create strong, healthy offspring.
		Anyway, I felt the drill back then.
		The dentist didn&apos;t believe me, but it hurt.
		It wasn&apos;t nearly as bad as if they hadn&apos;t numbed me, but the numbing agent wasn&apos;t as effective for me as it should&apos;ve been.
		It happened again today, but this time, I was having teeth actually removed.
		It hurt worse than I remember it hurting before.
		This dentist actually listened to me though, and kept injecting a little more of the numbing agent.
		Eventually, I had to say that it still hurt, but not to add more; I&apos;d endure it.
		I&apos;m sure they weren&apos;t going to overdose me or anything, they&apos;d be too careful for that, but there comes a point when you see it&apos;s not going to get any better.
		They say redheads have a strong resistance to numbing agents.
		You&apos;ve got to be careful with them, as you need to use a lot, but you don&apos;t want to take it to dangerous levels.
		I&apos;m not a redhead, but this fact shows that genetic resistances to numbing agents exist in humans.
		It&apos;s likely that I have a higher resistance to them than most, though not as bad as redheads have it.
	</p>
	<p>
		There was one regard in which the dentist wasn&apos;t listening to me though.
		They kept trying to assure me that the noises I was hearing were normal and asking me if what I was reacting to was feelings of pressure.
		I said repeatedly that I wasn&apos;t concerned about the noises at all, and it was pain I was reacting too, not pressure.
		I did feel the pressure a lot more than the pain, but I didn&apos;t mention that as the pressure was completely irrelevant to my reactions.
		It was scary, and I literally cried.
		That said, I was being a total baby about it.
		The pain, while fairly regular, was usually under a one on a zero to ten scale, and it peaked out just under a three.
		The dentist claimed I was doing well, but they didn&apos;t see the state of horror I was feeling inside.
		To be clear, at this point, I was afraid of the procedure, not thoughts of having apple sauce for dinner every night.
	</p>
	<p>
		The roots of one of my teeth to be extracted had fused together.
		Such a complication meant the tooth wouldn&apos;t easily come out.
		Their explanation was that the roots of the tooth basically formed an interlocking loop around a complementary loop of bone.
		I couldn&apos;t see that on the actual tooth root once they pulled it out though.
		As they were having difficulties, and probably also because they could tell I was very stressed, they gave me a bit of a break.
		Not a single tooth had been removed yet, as I verified with the dental assistant after everything was done.
		I glanced at the clock, and saw an hour and twenty minutes had gone by since I&apos;d arrived.
		It felt more like fifteen minutes.
		Fifteen, terrible minutes.
		Despite the fear and stress, time was really flying by.
		When it came time to get back to work, they had another dentist come and work on me for what felt like only a few minutes, though we&apos;ve already established the fact that my sense of time was way off.
		They were less gentle than the main dentist that was helping me, but I felt like they were getting somewhere.
		Once done, they left and the main dentist got back to work.
	</p>
	<p>
		In this second stretch, I was feeling much more composed.
		Everything still hurt, but I endured it better and was no longer crying.
		I guess during that first part, I wasn&apos;t sure what to expect.
		After getting a taste of it, I was able to let it sink in during the break.
		I didn&apos;t feel either tooth come out.
		I was feeling pain, but the one thing you&apos;d think would hurt the most didn&apos;t hurt at all.
		Another thing I appreciate was that both dentists revved their drills before putting them in my mouth when they were (presumably) cutting the tooth with fused roots.
		I&apos;m not sure if it was their intention or not, as it very well could have been either their intention to warn me or to simply test to see the drill was running, but I liked knowing when the drill was going to be in there before it started up in my mouth.
	</p>
	<p>
		Once the main dentist finished with the extraction, another dentist came in.
		They might&apos;ve been the other dentist from before, but I didn&apos;t see their face long enough the first time, between my anxiety and the short duration of their work.
		They took a look in my mouth and recommended a single stitch to close the hole.
		So the main dentist put that in.
		I felt the needle poke through, though I didn&apos;t feel any of the pulling on the string that I could see with my eyes.
		It seemed to take quite a while and he needed to keep going in, so it seemed almost like multiple stitches.
		I only felt the needle that once though, so it was probably just slow work because of the small operating area.
	</p>
	<p>
		Only one side of my mouth was operated on.
		I&apos;m not sure if it&apos;s because the complications caused too much time loss or if it&apos;s just that the dentist decided I need one side of my mouth working to chew food with.
		Either way, I&apos;m not having apple sauce for dinner, but I do have to come back to have the other side worked on.
		My appointment is in almost two weeks, on 2017-12-20.
		The dental assistant asked if I wanted to see the extracted teeth, so I snapped a photograph of them.
		It was only two teeth, but one was cut in half so it looks a bit like three.
		The dentist then asserted that I couldn&apos;t keep the teeth; they&apos;d need to be disposed of because of the infection around the roots.
		I assumed going in that they&apos;d be treated as biological waste, infection or not, so the only surprise to me was that there might be cases in which they let people keep their former teeth.
	</p>
	<p>
		For the next appointment, the dentist said they&apos;d like to set me up with someone to drive me home.
		I declined, and they said they really couldn&apos;t have me driving or biking after being hopped up on whatever it was they were planning to give me.
		They said if I was willing to have a repeat of what went down today, they could do that instead, and then it&apos;d be safe for me to bike home.
		I assumed that&apos;s what would be happening anyway, so I&apos;m perfectly cool with that.
		Especially if it gets me out of being too loopy to even operate a bicycle.
		How do I do my job or my coursework if I&apos;m loopy?
	</p>
	<p>
		The dentist set me up with four prescriptions today.
		The first is another copy of that toothpaste prescription, as the pharmacy claims not to have gotten it.
		The second is for ibuprofen, as I have a gaping hole in my mouth now and it&apos;s expected to start hurting as the numbness fades.
		And the third is for hydrocodone/acetaminophen, just in case.
		It&apos;s supposed to make one loopy though and unable to work, so I need to avoid actually using that one if at all possible.
		I&apos;m going to avoid using the ibuprofen too, if I can tolerate the pain.
		Additionally, the pharmacist told me the ibuprofen brings with it a risk of developing stomach ulcers, especially if taken without food.
		It&apos;d been nice if the dentist had told me that before having me take some at the end of the appointment before I left ... without food.
		The final prescription is for an antibiotic, to be taken only if I notice an infection or start running a fever.
	</p>
	<p>
		As the numbness wore off, the pain didn&apos;t start in my tooth holes first, but in my lip and the wall of my mouth.
		It seems one of the dentists cut the inside of my lip pretty badly, and the wall of my mouth, as felt by my tongue, seems to have suffered similar damage.
		No matter though.
		Unlike my teeth, my lip and mouth wall will heal.
		Next came the back pain.
		The dentist put a lot of pressure on my skull, which is obviously connected to my spine.
		I guess the ibuprofen was preventing the pain signals from my back too, as it&apos;s not exactly a localised drug.
		There is a bad soreness in my jaw though now.
		I&apos;m going to try to endure.
		As long as I don&apos;t touch that part of my jaw though, at least I don&apos;t have any sharp pains, just the soreness.
	</p>
	<p>
		Startcom seems to be shutting down now.
		Lovely.
		They&apos;re the only <abbr title="Transport Layer Security">TLS</abbr> certificate provider I know of that offers gratis certificates that last for a reasonable amount of time.
		I might need to go back to using self-signed certificates like I used in the beginning.
	</p>
	<p>
		Another student wrote to me several days ago, it seems, asking about the coursework no longer on my site.
		They claim the site is down, but it&apos;s not, so I&apos;m assuming they&apos;re misinterpreting the takedown pages.
		My work was an example for at least a couple students, but the school blackmailed me into taking it down.
		That said, either or both of these students may have done more than used it as an example, and may have engaged in plagiarism.
		That doesn&apos;t justify the threats made against me, but it does mean my work may not have been doing good.
	</p>
	<p>
		I bought a bottle of apple sauce and brought it to work just in case the pain would prevent me from eating normally once the drugs wore off.
		It&apos;s a good thing I did too, as I ended up needing it.
		I ended up having apple sauce for dinner after all.
		Once I got home and had time to read the directions given by the dentist more thoroughly, I saw that was what they wanted from me anyway.
		I specifically mentioned being able to chew normally after they decided not to operate on both sides, and they didn&apos;t say anything to contradict me.
		Anyway, I don&apos;t think their deciding to wait to extract the other problem teeth was in my best interest.
		I&apos;m now going to have a longer recovery time, and I&apos;m not sure I gain anything from that.
		The next surgery will be just before my mother wants me to go with her to a family gathering, too.
		I won&apos;t be able to eat anything there, and will have to supply all my own soft foods for a couple days.
		If I fail to bring enough, I likely don&apos;t get to eat.
	</p>
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